Burkina Faso

Jihadists Abduct 10 Aid Workers in Niger: NGO

Armed jihadists abducted 10 humanitarian workers as they were distributing food in a village in southwestern Niger, their NGO said.

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Burkina Army Says It Has Destroyed Two Jihadist ‘Bases’

Burkina Faso’s security forces said they destroyed two jihadist bases in the north and east of the country and arrested two suspects near the border with the Ivory Coast.

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Ivory Coast Says It Has Captured Jihadist Leader Behind Border Attack

Ivory Coast said it had captured a jihadist who led a deadly attack on a border post and arrested a 'very large' number of his subordinates.

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Two UN Peacekeepers Killed in Attack in Northern Mali

Gunmen have killed two UN peacekeepers in a region of northwestern Mali wracked by jihadist violence, the UN said Sunday.

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About 10 Dead in Jihadist Attack on I.Coast Border Post: Security Sources

Suspected jihadists attacked a frontier post on Ivory Coast's border with Burkina Faso overnight, killing around 10 people, security sources said Thursday.

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Three Top Jihadists Dominate Sahel After Al-Qaeda Leader Death

Three leaders have been left dominating the jihadist insurgency in the Sahel, following the death of a top al-Qaeda commander in the West African state of Mali last week.

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At Least 50 Die in Burkina Attacks Blamed on Jihadists

Ten people were killed when an aid convoy was ambushed in Burkina Faso, the government said Sunday, bringing to at least 50 the death toll from a string of attacks blamed on jihadists. The ambush occurred on Saturday near the northern town of Barsalogho, it said in a statement, adding that an attack on a livestock market in the east of the country earlier in the day had claimed 25 lives, according to a provisional toll. The humanitarian convoy was returning from the northern town of Foube after delivering food there, the statement said. At least five civilians and five gendarmes were killed and around 20 people were injured. Saturday’s attacks came a day after a convoy of mainly shopkeepers escorted by a local self-defense unit came under fire in the north of the West African country, killing 15 people. That attack, in Loroum province, was also blamed on jihadists. The east and north of the former French colony are the hardest hit by attacks by jihadists, who have killed more than 900 people and caused some 860,000 people to flee their homes in the past five years. A local governor, Colonel Saidou Sanou, said in a statement that the …

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Eight Jihadists Killed in Ivorian-Burkina Operation: Ivory Coast Army

Eight suspected jihadists were killed and another 38 captured in a joint operation by Burkinabe and Ivorian forces near the two countries’ shared border, the Ivory Coast army said Sunday. The captured men — 24 in Burkina Faso and 14 in Ivory Coast — were handed over to intelligence services, a source at Ivorian army headquarters told AFP. A “terrorist base” was destroyed at Alidougou in Burkina Faso, the source added. Arms, ammunition, USB keys, and cell phones were also seized during the operation, the source said. Operation “Comoe,” named after a river that flows through the two west African countries, was launched in early May, the source said, praising the “perfect coordination between the two armies.” This joint operation, presented on Saturday by the two armies’ top commanders as the first of its kind, took place northeast of the Ivorian town of Ferkessedougou and south of Banfora in Burkina Faso. On Saturday, a Burkinabe security source said the entire operation had been carried out in Ivory Coast. But local people told an AFP journalist that the fighting took place around the villages of Tinadalla and Diambeh north of Kong in the northeast of Ivory Coast. They spoke of a considerable military …

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Worried Togo Finds Itself on Front Line of Sahel’s Jihadist War

In a makeshift bunker of sacks of rice beneath a tree, heavily-armed Togolese soldiers keep watch over villagers coming and going on foot or bike across the border with Burkina Faso. Just a dried-out river bed separates the two West African countries. In surrounding fields, peasant farmers are bent silhouettes, watering the sorghum and maize seeds sown before the arrival of the first rains. Soon, clouds will chase away the fine dust of the harmattan, the desert wind that each year sweeps off the Sahara southwards to the coast and chokes the air. Nothing dramatic, or so it would seem, ever happens at Yemboate, in Togo’s far north. Yet less than 30 kilometers (19 miles) away, over the border in eastern Burkina Faso, jihadists and militia groups have imposed their own brutal law. Those policemen, doctors, and teachers who have not fled are being hunted down and butchered. “When I was small, we spent our time swimming in the river,” says farmer Abdoulaye Mossi, leaning on his bike with a hoe, speaking to AFP before the coronavirus pandemic. The arid channel separates his peaceful village of cob huts from a Burkinabe village on the other side. “Fear rules today,” the farmer says. But fear does …

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Two Soldiers, Five Volunteers Killed in Burkina Attack

Two Burkina Faso soldiers and five civilian defense volunteers have been killed during an ambush on a military patrol in the restive north of the country, security sources said Tuesday. The attack occurred on Monday as soldiers from the military detachment in Banh in Loroum province were carrying out a patrol in the area, the sources said. “Two soldiers were killed along with five civilians,” a security source told AFP. Another security source said the civilian casualties were “defense volunteers who were with the military unit during the patrol,” adding two soldiers also died. The source said four others in the patrol were wounded, without giving further details. Al-Qaeda-affiliated jihadist alliance GSIM claimed responsibility for the attack, claiming to have killed “nine soldiers” in an ambush and taken weapons and vehicles, in a text sent to AFP late Tuesday. The Mali-based GSIM (Group to Support Islam and Muslims) comprises several different jihadist groups in the Sahel. On May 11, jihadists killed eight Burkinabe soldiers during an attack close to the Niger border in Yagha province, security sources said at the time. Burkina Faso is part of a regional effort to battle an Islamist insurgency, along with neighboring Mali and Niger, Mauritania and Chad. However, …

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